Then Miss Huckleberries turned to us and smiled.

“All right,” says she; “Goo’-by.”

Them Todds took the train for the city next morning.  I drove ’em to the depot.  James was kind of glum, but Clarissa talked for two.  Her opinion of the Cape and Capers, ’specially me, was decided.  The final blast was just as she was climbing the car steps.

“Of all the barbarians,” says she; “utter, uncouth, murdering barbarians in—­”

She stopped, thinking for a word, I s’pose.  I didn’t feel that I could improve on Becky Huckleberries conversation much, so I says: 

“All right!  Goo’-by!”

THE MARK ON THE DOOR

One nice moonlight evening me and Cap’n Jonadab and Peter T., having, for a wonder, a little time to ourselves and free from boarders, was setting on the starboard end of the piazza, smoking, when who should heave in sight but Cap’n Eri Hedge and Obed Nickerson.  They’d come over from Orham that day on some fish business and had drove down to Wellmouth Port on purpose to put up at the Old Home for the night and shake hands with me and Jonadab.  We was mighty glad to see ’em, now I tell you.

They’d had supper up at the fish man’s at the Centre, so after Peter T. had gone in and fetched out a handful of cigars, we settled back for a good talk.  They wanted to know how business was and we told ’em.  After a spell somebody mentioned the Todds and I spun my yarn about the balky mare and the Greased Lightning.  It tickled ’em most to death, especially Obed.

“Ho, ho!” says he.  “That’s funny, ain’t it.  Them power boats are great things, ain’t they.  I had an experience in one—­or, rather, in two—­a spell ago when I was living over to West Bayport.  My doings was with gasoline though, not electricity.  ’Twas something of an experience.  Maybe you’d like to hear it.”

“’Way I come to be over there on the bay side of the Cape was like this.  West Bayport, where my shanty and the big Davidson summer place and the Saunders’ house was, used to be called Punkhassett—­ which is Injun for ’The last place the Almighty made’—­and if you’ve read the circulars of the land company that’s booming Punkhassett this year, you’ll remember that the principal attraction of them diggings is the ‘magnificent water privileges.’  ’Twas the water privileges that had hooked me.  Clams was thick on the flats at low tide, and fish was middling plenty in the bay.  I had two weirs set; one a deep-water weir, a half mile beyond the bar, and t’other just inside of it that I could drive out to at low water.  A two-mile drive ’twas, too; the tide goes out a long ways over there.  I had a powerboat—­seven and a half power gasoline—­ that I kept anchored back of my nighest-in weir in deep water, and a little skiff on shore to row off to her in.